That means partly. You know, as in “Waffensysteme nur bedingt einsatzbereit” (weapons systems are only partly ready for action)?

Partly ready for action? Isn’t that like being kind of pregnant? Anyway, here are just a few things that don’t seem to be working in the Bundeswehr at the moment (this list changes continually, however – as in keeps getting longer):

Only 39 Of Germany’s 128 Eurofighters were able to get off the ground last year.

Only 26 of the older Tornado fighters were operational.

A full 16 of the 72 CH 53 transport helicopters were working.

Similarly, of the 15 Airbus A400M transport aircraft only three were operational.

One (1) Class 212 A submarine was ready, willing and able.

And of Germany’s 244 Leopard 2 tanks, only 105 were tanked up and ready to go. Tanks for nothing, guys.

But think of it this way: If the potential enemy doesn’t know which one of these war machines is actually working, wouldn’t that confuse the hell out of him? It’s kind of clever if you stop to think about it. So that must surely be why Angela Merkel will be keeping on her Gal Friday Ursula von der Leyen as Germany’s Defense Minister in the next great and grand coalition government coming our way. Girls are more tricky at this kind of stuff. I guess they have to be.

That means biodiesel. And it’s dangerous stuff. Just go ask the German Air Force.

An entire squadron of Luftwaffe Tornadoes was out of action for a week because there was too much biodiesel in their kerosene. But at least the air quality around that airbase was exceptionally good for a few days, you know?

Meanwhile… The Bundeswehr is running out of tents and clothing now. Well, to be fair, it’s not the entire Budneswehr. It’s just their special rapid deployment forces.

I mean, if it’s on your way and not too much of an inconvenience? They want to come home now but their airplane is broken.

The Bundeswehr, one of NATO’s largest militaries, is now a steady source of news about planes that can’t fly, tanks that break down and troops that admire the Nazis. So what exactly has gone wrong in Germany’s army?

Quite simple, really. These are soldiers who are not allowed to be soldiers in an army that is not allowed to be an army – other than to serve as an excuse for being able to export lots of way cool and expensive military equipment that works fine everywhere else but here. There’s a lack of culture in Germany regarding its military and its responsibility as a partner, in other words.

Three years ago, Germany’s military made headlines when it used broomsticks instead of machine guns during a NATO exercise because of a shortage of equipment. The lack of real weapons in the European Union’s most populous nation was seen as symptomatic of how underfunded its military has long been.

One Russian annexation later, if anything, the state of affairs has only gotten worse, according to the parliamentary commissioner for the country’s armed forces.

He has now reached the conclusion that the German military is virtually “not deployable for collective defense,” at the moment. Independent commissioner Hans-Peter Bartels also indicated in a recent interview that Germany was unprepared for the possibility of a larger conflict even though smaller operations abroad may still be possible.

Again: Germany’s army is an alibi army that will never be used for anything other than to make Germans feel better (less worse?) about being 1) pacifists while being at the same time 2) the world’s third largest weapons exporter. Remember this when the next demand for them to spend 2 percent GDP on their defense comes up and they start to fidget – and get away with not spending it again.

“Perhaps these will be the hardest three months of their lives,” says a deep-voiced commentator during the opening credits of the show, against a dramatic backdrop of silhouettes of the recruits, who have attracted a strong following on social media.

Financed by the German army at a cost of €7.9m (£7m), the show, consisting of daily episodes of four to seven minutes, is an attempt by the German military, the Bundeswehr, to attract new soldiers at a time when their numbers, following the abolition of conscription six years ago, are at a historic low.

That means unfathomable or mind-boggling. And, well, actually, it isn’t.

Not at all. It is in fact not in the least unfathomable that of the 244 Leopard II tanks the Bundeswehr has at its disposal (244 tanks for an entire army?) only 95 of them are acutally, well, disposable. That’s, uh – let me do the math here – less than half.

What was I saying the other day about Germany living in a parallel universe (comments)? Do you believe me now?

Please note: These are also the same tanks that are Exportschlager. Another German word. This one meaning export hits. See how it all fits together (not)?

Frustrated by the low number of women interested in becoming officers in the German army, the Bundeswehr has decided to once again lead from behind and has begun transitioning some of the few male officers it has (this is the German Army, after all) into the female kind.

Thought to be a transgression up until very recently, these officers, mostly active as translators or in the transportation division, will be transferred after transformation to the transnational and transcultural Transall troops currently stationed in Transylvania where they will study, among other things, transcendental meditation (this is the German army, after all).

Or so the transcript I’ve read. It was a transliteration, however. End of transmission already.

“EU enlargement has been largely abandoned, other states have left the community, Europe has lost its global competitiveness… The increasingly disorderly, sometimes chaotic and conflict-prone world has dramatically changed the security environment of Germany and Europe.”

A possible vision for the year 2040? Nope, nobody has to wait that long for this.

Transferring six (6) aircraft from Turkey halfway around the world to Jordan is anything but an easy logistical problem to solve.

Not if you are the German army, it isn’t. A move of this magnitude has to be carefully planned and cautiously implemented (not to mention cautiously planned and carefully implemented), otherwise something could go wrong because, well, only one or two of these damned planes actually fly.

And this is war, after all.

Last month, Ankara blocked a German parliamentary delegation from visiting Bundeswehr troops at the base, marking the second time that Turkey had done so. Turkish officials said their decision was a response to Germany granting asylum to Turkish military personnel accused of participating in a failed coup last year – a move that reportedly enraged Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else.
- Frederic Bastiat

The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.
- Margaret Thatcher

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed — and hence clamorous to be led to safety — by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
- H.L. Mencken

It is like information theory; it is noise posing as signal so you do not even recognize it as noise. The intelligence agencies call it disinformation. If you can float enough disinformation into circulation you will totally abolish everyone's contact with reality, probably your own included.
- Philip K. Dick

Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation.
- Henry Kissinger

Hegel, installed from above, by the powers that be, as the certified Great Philosopher, was a flat-headed, insipid, nauseating, illiterate charlatan, who reached the pinnacle of audacity in scribbling together and dishing up the craziest mystifying nonsense. This nonsense has been noisily proclaimed as immortal wisdom by mercenary followers and readily accepted as such by all fools, who joined into as perfect a chorus of admiration as had ever been heard before. The extensive field of spiritual influence with which Hegel was furnished by those in power has enabled him to achieve the intellectual corruption of a whole generation.
- Arthur Schopenhauer

German schadenfreude knows no bounds, particularly when it comes to the United States. The country loves to feel superior to a superpower like America. Yet Germany also harbors a childish infatuation with Obama — one which has little political grounding. The reasons are psychological. …The criticism of America has always been a bit infantile. One is familiar with the theory from psychoanalysis, when people talk about transference, or when suppressed feelings or emotions are overcome by projecting them onto others. It may work for a while, improving one’s feeling of self-worth by devaluing an imagined adversary. But it always falls short. Which is why the ritual must be constantly carried out anew.
- Jan Fleischhauer

Intellectuals, in the words of the writer Eric Hoffer, "cannot operate at room temperature." They are excited by daring opinions, clever theories, sweeping ideologies, and utopian visions of the kind that caused so much trouble during the 20th century. The kind of reason that expands moral sensibilities comes not from grand intellectual "systems" but from the exercise of logic, clarity, objectivity, and proportionality.
- Steven Pinker

The difference between Greek pessimism and the oriental and modern variety is that the Greeks had not made the discovery that the pathetic mood may be idealized, and figure as a higher form of sensibility. Their spirit was still too essentially masculine for pessimism to be elaborated or lengthily dwelt on in their classic literature... The discovery that the enduring emphasis, so far as this world goes, may be laid on its pain and failure, was reserved for races more complex, and (so to speak) more feminine than the Hellenes had attained to being in the classic period.
- William James

A doctrine must not be understood, but has rather to be believed in. We can be absolutely certain only about things we do not understand. A doctrine that is understood is shorn of its strength. Once we understand a thing, it is as if it had originated in us. And, clearly, those who are asked to renounce the self and sacrifice it cannot see eternal certitude in anything which originates in that self.
- Eric Hoffer

The ideal power with which we feel ourselves in connection, the 'God' of ordinary men, is, both by ordinary men and by philosophers, endowed with certain of those metaphysical attributes which in the lecture on philosophy I treated with such disrespect. He is assumed as a matter of course to be 'one and only' and to be 'infinite'; and the notion of many finite gods is one which hardly any one thinks it worth while to consider, and still less to uphold. Nevertheless, in the interests of intellectual clearness, I feel bound to say that religious experience, as we have studied it, cannot be cited as unequivocally supporting the infinitist belief. The only thing that it unequivocally testifies to is that we can experience union with something larger than ourselves and in that union find our greatest peace. Philosophy, with its passion for unity, and mysticism with its mono-ideistic bent, both 'pass to the limit' and identify the something with a unique God who is the all-inclusive soul of the world. Popular opinion, respectful to their authority, follows the example which they set.

Meanwhile the practical needs and experiences of religion seem to me sufficiently met by the belief that beyond each man and in a fashion continuous with him there exists a larger power which is friendly to him and to his ideals. All that the facts require is that the power should be both other and larger than our conscious selves. Anything larger will do, if only it be large enough to trust for the next step. It need not be infinite, it need not be solitary. It might conceivably even be only a larger and more godlike self, of which the present self would then be but the mutilated expression, and the universe might conceivably be a collection of such selves, of different degrees of inclusiveness, with no absolute unity realized in it at all.- William James